From what little can be gleaned from the source, it seems to be your standard sci-fi wonder element, like unobtanium, "element zero" in Mass Effect, and so forth - a known material, but exotic and hard to work with. We know it can be synthesized by magic, since Shioi had both a TD reactor and three corrosive torpedoes aboard, and before Corwin did his thing she was a wrecked 20th-century submarine, not a Fog vessel at all. (Incidentally, she had three because Iona had that many in her Last Known Good configuration; she had four left when she went to Dìqiú and then used one on the wall at Fort Tonraq.)

For our purposes, I figure it's something that the Fog have the technology to make, but not something most individual Fog ships can make for themselves (thus making most if not all of the fleet dependent on bases like Midway for refueling and resupply). Most likely Akashi has the means to create more of it somewhere in her bagcargo hold of tricks.

(It can also evidently be de-synthesized by magic, since Corwin wouldn't have left a mass of radioactive material lying at the bottom of Qurluqtuq Fjord, however off his game he was. :)

>-I noticed the "Project Warlock" callout for the hybrid-Fog ships
>Earthforce was using, and looking at it, the way the Fleet of Fog
>seems to have left behind tools and examples of how to construct their
>vessels for whoever goes looking to find them does sorta sound like
>the Shadows' MO. Is this actually a connection, or am I reading too
>much into it?

Well, the hybrid ships being a product of something called "Project Warlock" is certainly a Babylon 5 reference at least in part (it's also a nod toward the WARLOCK in Strike Witches, which was based in a similarly bad idea). Beyond that, though, you're off-course; the Warlock-class ships are a product of (rather ham-fisted) EF reverse engineering, not products of the Fog leaving how-to hints around.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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